Can't print from Windows 7 to networked printer

8 posts in this topic

I have an interesting problem. I have a spare PC that is running as a printer server. The PC is named Printers and shows up in my wireless home network. I have 3 printers that are attached by USB to this PC; an HP LaserJet 2300dn, a Canon S900 inkjet, and a Canon iP1700 photo printer. These 3 printers are available from the 1 Vista and 4 XP Pro w SP3 PCs that are wirelessly connected in my house. The 3 printers are all visible at //Printers.

The problem is that I cannot print from a Windows 7 PC to the networked printers. I can do Add Printer and Windows 7 will go to Windows Update to find a driver, but comes back saying that it cannot find a suitable .inf file.

The driver file that I used for the Windows XP installations is lj2300prnsyswin-en.exe. This is a 32 bit driver, and the HP website says that Windows 7 has a suitable driver built in, but it is not found.

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The printers PC has 32 bit Windows XP Pro SP3 on it. All the PCs except the one that doesn't print are 32 bit Windows XP Pro SP3; the PC that doesn't print is Windows 7 64 bit.

The printers PC obviously has the 32 bit driver for Windows XP on it. If I try to install the 64 bit version on the PC that doesn't print I get an error message that Windows 7 doesn't need a driver for this printer. So the Windows 7 PC sees the printer that I want, but doesn't have drivers for it.

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The HP website doesn't seem to have Windows 7 drivers for this printer. They have 3 Universal Print Drivers listed; 1 for Windows PCL5, 1 for Windows PCL6, and 1 for Windows PostScript. Which one of these would I use, and would they install on Windows XP 32 bit?

Thanks for help and patience T.

Regards,

Mike

EDIT: The webpage that you pointed out seems to suggest older versions of Windows drivers to be installed instead of newer ones, and ones with different bit lengths.

Would it help to install the 64 bit universal driver on the 64 bit PC? If so then does that mean that nothing else needs to be installed on the printer PC?

Edited April 12, 2013 by mikep56

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You can ignore the fact that the link I posted obviously refers to operating systems you aren't using, I posted it to illustrate the method of adding the additional drivers to a printer installed on XP. As far as "what" driver to install that way, I couldn't tell you exactly. You can always try some to see if they work, remove it if they don't.

But I'm fairly certain that you only need to add the driver to the XP PC and not the Win7 PC. Being a network printer, it should work properly that way. I don't have the ability to test these devices so you may need to ask on the HP support forum if you have problems finding the correct driver, or perhaps they provide a software package that makes this easier.